Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice - They Don’t Need It

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 33

Speculation about the demise of the news business and advice about what they should do about it is everywhere. It makes for great, self-congratulatory sport but it won’t help the news industry.

Why?

Because the news industry doesn’t suffer from a shortage of ideas or possible revenue models, it suffers from a different but more acute malady: being an institution during a time of disruptive change.

While we have all been busy telling the newspaper institution what they should do differently we have missed one big point: Institutions are structured to precisely NOT do much of anything different.

The number one thing that ails newspapers? 70% of all costs lie in physical distribution and printing while readership and revenues have dramatically moved away from paper. This leads to a simple-minded but commonsense conclusion (and my superfluous piece of advice): maximize your online presence, build your online community, concentrate on journalistic talent, and jettison all costs associated with print; stop the presses.

Even if I you think I am wrong, just play along with me for a moment and, for the purpose of this exercise, assume I am right. If you can’t go that far substitute your own radical therapy (you know you have one!) in place of mine and answer the next question. Which major newspaper could have gone to its board anytime before 2009 and successfully proposed such a radical solution? The answer if you have ever worked in a large, “institutionalized” organization is zero. The scenario is so horrific, involves pains so great, outcomes so unknown and certain near-term revenue loss such that no institutional body would be capable of acting on it - much less restructuring around so medieval a remedy.

The failure of newspapers is not a failure of imagination or foresight nor is it a failure of individuals. This kind of failure is the hallmark of all institutions in the face of tectonic disruption. Institutions are a set of agreements that perpetuate a social order beyond individual intention or tenure. Changing those agreements is costly and time-consuming. So when the rate of change accelerates beyond the institution’s adaptive capacity - extinction follows.

The question is not “what should newspapers do?” but “how can a large institution effectively organize in response to disruptive change?” Taken thus, it is not only the fundamental question to ask of newspapers - but to ask of ourselves in relation to a host of big-ticket game-changers such as peak oil, environmental collapse and climate change that simultaneously require and defy our capacity for institutional response.

The stakes are much bigger than news. Let’s put our mind to that question instead of making more to-do lists. From the Radar audience I would like to ask for historical examples of institutions that have effectively responded to disruption? What are the lessons that we can draw from them?

Four short links: 1 September 2009

Social Investigative Journalism, Mozilla Service, Gov Data, Video Fun

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

1. Help Me Investigate -- find other people who want to investigate the same things you do ("on which streets in my town are the most parking tickets issued?", "why is there a giant unused TV screen in the downtown of this city?", "how much does this city council spend on PR?"), work together to resolve it, and leave a record of the answer for others. It's a different angle on MySociety's What Do They Know.
2. Mozilla Service Week -- We believe the Internet should make life better. Join us the week of September 14-21, 2009, as we take action to make a difference in our communities, our world, our Web. (via MySociety)
3. Open Government Data: Starting to Judge Results -- mall, tangible, steps that turn published government data into cost savings, measurable service improvements, or other concrete goods will "punch above their weight" : not only are they valuable in their own right, but they help favorably disposed civic servants make the case internally for more transparency and disclosure. Beyond aiming for perfection and thinking about the long run, the volunteer community would benefit from seeking low hanging fruit that will prove the concept of open government data and justify further investment.
4. Three Frames -- small fun. I love that there are still small fun things to do. (via pleaseenjoy on Twitter)

Four short links: 1 June 2009

Spymaster, Arsenic, Maps, and Happiness

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 1

1. Spymaster -- a faux-spy game on Twitter: Each player becomes a master of a spy ring based upon their Twitter followers list. The more people that follow you and are playing characters in Spymaster, the more powerful your network will be. As a spymaster, you can perform tasks or attack other spymasters on Twitter. With each successful attempt, you will gain virtual currency and points that allow you to grow even stronger. I'm nervous that it's a project of a classified ads company, but intelligent friends appear to be enjoying it, but that may just be be the jaded eye of a world-weary veteran of pyramid schemes and spamalots.
2. Getting Arsenic Out Of Water -- MIT Technology Review piece about the IBM discovery that a chemical used to pattern chips also acts as a membrane to remove arsenic. More stuff that matters. (via roterhund on Twitter)
3. Mapumental -- MySociety folks making maps useful. It's the continuation of time travel maps, where bus, train, tram, tube, and ferry timetables are mashed with real estate prices to show you where you can live for what you can afford and how long a commute you want. A new twist is crowdsourced "how scenic is this area?" data, so you can choose other dimensions for where you might want to live. New dimensions on transportation data and travel planning.
4. What Makes Us Happy? (The Atlantic) -- the real world is a lot more complex than trivial "get happy fast!" self-help books would have you believe. This longitudinal study shows how complex happiness and misery are. Vaillant’s other main interest is the power of relationships. “It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors. The men’s relationships at age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable, except defenses. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93 percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 had been close to a brother or sister when younger. In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” (via timoreilly on Twitter)

Importance of Innovation in Finance & BarCampBank

by Jesse Robbins | @jesserobbins | comments: 2

“Progress is not the mere correction of evils. Progress is the constant replacing of the best there is with something still better.” -Edward Filene

Two years ago, when we were organizing the first BarCampBank in the US, many people found it hard to believe that banks & credit unions could a place for meaningful grassroots innovation. Even crazier was the idea of organizing an unconference to begin bringing open source, transparency, identity, and community into the very closed world of banking & finance.

Since then the BarCampBank idea has turned into a movement. There have been over 14 events all over the world, and many of the ideas generated are beginning to turn into action.

To me, the global financial system is a platform that exists to “create more value than it captures”. Tim explained this in his Work on Stuff that Matters post, saying:

“A bank that loans money to a small business sees that business grow, perhaps borrow more money, hire employees who make deposits and take out loans, and so on. The power of this cycle to lift people out of poverty has been demonstrated by microfinance institutions like the Grameen Bank. Grameen is clearly focused on creating more value than they capture; not so the like of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, or WaMu, or many of the other failed financial institutions involved in the current financial meltdown.”

There has never been a more important time to bring meaningful innovation into the financial system, and there has never been more opportunity for our community to make it happen.

The next event is occurring this weekend (April 25-26, 2009) on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

After that, the following events are planned:

• BarCampBankVegas is set for May 2, 2009.
• BarCampBankCharleston2 is set for June 13, 2009
• BarCampBankGermany is set for October 23-25, 2009

Stuff That Matters: Non-profit to For-profit

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 17

I'm planning to publish a series of "Stuff that Matters" posts over the next couple of months, each exploring a particular industry or opportunity in detail, including such areas as education, health care, open government, energy, disaster response, security, manufacturing, supply chain management, and many more. But before I do that, I wanted my next posts, after the Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago, to share a couple of stories that illustrate the economic impact of work on stuff that matters.

When they hear the idealism of "stuff that matters", many people immediately think of non-profits. This is not entirely inappropriate. The heart of my message is that work on stuff that matters is a great hedge in down times: even if there isn't a huge monetary payoff, you've done something that needs doing. And it's certainly true that non-profit enterprises are often a good way to tackle hard problems that the marketplace doesn't seem to be addressing.

But I want to make clear that I'm not just talking about charity work. I'm talking about the creation of real economic value. There are huge opportunities for entrepreneurs in solving hard problems, and in so doing creating new markets that can be exploited not just by themselves but by those that follow in their footsteps.

Online Financial Statements for Public Companies

The first story I want to tell is an unusual high tech success story. It is the story of an entrepreneur who created a huge market and set the stage for a big part of the modern financial world, via a non-profit project that he eventually donated to the U.S. government!

It was 1993. The world was just waking up to the commercial potential of the internet, but it was still largely a market of enthusiasts, people who were putting information online for the love of it.

Carl Malamud had a big idea: we, the people of the United States, were paying for a lot of great data to be collected, but we had very bad access to it. In fact, the government was providing the data to "value added resellers" who charged a pretty penny for public access. As Carl himself tells the story:

In the summer of 1993, I was helping my friends at Sun Microsystems give a demonstration of the Internet to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the U.S. House of Representatives....

After the demonstration, Chairman Edward J. Markey, came up to me and wondered if I could look into something that was bugging him. His subcommittee had responsibility not only for the telecommunications industry, but also for oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A bunch of Nader's Raiders had been sending in petitions to the subcommittee asking why the SEC filings weren't available on the Internet. The initial reaction from the SEC was that the reason the data wasn't on the Internet was that it was technically impossible, and that even if the data were available the only people interested in SEC fillings were Wall Street Fatcats and they didn't really need subsidized access to data they were willing to pay for.

If something is technically impossible, I get interested. I looked at the EDGAR system and decided it was worth taking a crack at it. Our first cut at the problem was to try and work with the SEC. Chairman Markey's Chief of Staff asked the SEC to come in and discuss the idea of giving us the data and letting us put together an Internet site. There was a bit of pushback, to say the least.

The problem was the 70's era data processing system that the SEC had put in place in the late 80's. The deal was that EDGAR was way too rough for consumers to digest. It needed, to speak the MIS lingo of the time, “value-add.” Who would add value? Well, the SEC had cut a contract with a data wholesaler who would add value. The wholesaler, in turn, would sell to information retailers who would add even more value. Then, the information would be sold on the retail information market to the Wall Street crowd who had an interest in the data. Obviously, if we gave away all this information on the Internet, it would subvert our entire Free Enterprise System.

In that meeting with the SEC and the Chairman's staff, my favorite moment was when we got to the question of why in the world people would want to see EDGAR data. I maintained that the Internet was full of lots of people—students, journalists, senior citizen investors—who were dying for access to this data. The SEC felt that only a few people would want to see EDGAR documents, and besides the Internet (or “the ARPANET” as they kept referring to it) “didn't have the right kind of people.”

Now, this was a cheap shot, and I understood that what they meant was “there weren't a lot of people, just a few researchers,” but I couldn't resist.

“The right kind of people?” I said, rising up in my chair. “I think the American people are the right kind of people.”

So much for the idea of working cooperatively.

Carl got a donation of hardware from Sun, a small grant from the National Science Foundation, bought a dump of the SEC data, and together with a couple of other visionary hackers, built a free Edgar online service that went online in January 1994, starting first with ftp access, and eventually creating a web front end.

Carl and his compatriots ran the service for 18 months, garnering 50,000 daily visitors (a big number in those early days!), proving the point that there was public demand. But, Carl continues:

Our goal, however, wasn't to be in the database business. Our goal was to have the SEC serve their own data on the Internet. After we built up our user base, I decided it was time to force the issue. That's when the fireworks began. When users visited our EDGAR system in August 1995, they got an interesting message:

This Service Will Terminate in 60 Days:
Click Here For More Information

Click here they did! One of the lessons I've learned from building Internet services is that when people get something for free, they want their money's worth.

Just by coincidence, the SEC had scheduled an EDGAR Technology Conference for August 14, 1995. We weren't invited, natch, but felt that it was a public meeting and it might be fun to attend. The purpose of the conference was to look at the question of filing EDGAR documents, not necessarily the question of disseminating EDGAR documents, but I suspected that our announcement on the Internet EDGAR service might skew the agenda.

I have to say that my faith in government was restored after this. The commissioners of the SEC had clearly not been aware of the issue, but there is nothing like pieces in the Wall Street Journal and 15,000 messages to the Chairman to raise the profile of an issue. We were called in to meet the commissioners and the Chief of Staff to explain what it would take to run an EDGAR service. The new head of MIS at the SEC, Mike Bartell, turned out to be a real live wire and he volunteered to have the SEC run the service.

After a bit of checking with the congressional oversight committees, the SEC said they were ready to go. We loaded a couple of computers in the back of a station wagon and drove down to SEC headquarters and set them up a system. On October 1, the day we had said we would terminate our service, the SEC was fully operational.

The point of this story is threefold:

1. Non-profit activity can raise the floor, enabling new kinds of commercial activity. By proving the demand for public access to financial filings, Carl's project contributed to the world we take for granted today, where sites like finance.yahoo.com and finance.google.com provide to the general public information that was once only available (at high price) to a small population of Wall Street insiders. I'm not saying that without Carl, E*trade and its ilk would never have sprung up, but there's a reasonable chance that his work made possible more than one entrepreneurial fortune.

   For even more graphic examples, consider the internet itself, and open source software, neither of which began with the profit motive, yet created huge commercial ecosystems. Look carefully at the world of non-profits, and you'll see a shopping list of opportunities for entrepreneurs to build on. I'm particularly excited about opportunities in health care, disaster relief, and energy, all of which are ripe for transformation by new technology.

2. There's a huge opportunity for hackers (read: people with good computer skills) to help along the ambitious agenda of the current administration to create a more open, responsive government. (I'll address some of the most interesting current projects in a later post specifically on the government opportunity.)

3. A small number of very technical people can often accomplish tasks that large, existing players consider too difficult, or prohibitively expensive. I'll be returning to this topic in future posts.

Taking a Venture Capital Approach to Scientific Research

The second story is a report on a meeting I had a couple of weeks ago with Andy Rachleff, a former partner at Benchmark Capital, who has been working on the idea of how to inject more entrepreneurial energy into cancer research, and Lorraine Egan, the director of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, who has become his partner in disruption.

Here's a recent NBC video in which Andy and Lorraine explain what they are up to:

Lorraine also sent me some notes after our meeting, which she has given me permission to reproduce. She asks why we aren’t making more progress in the war on cancer, and answers:

There are a lot of reasons, but the one Damon Runyon is focusing on is the failure to invest in the high risk/high reward ideas of early career investigators. The thinking behind the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award is that young people are the most likely to have bold, transformative ideas and the passion and drive to pursue them. They need “venture capital,” but they are not getting it. In fact, they are encouraged to think small.

The scientific community, it turns out, is risk averse and conservative. The National Institutes of Health, with a current budget of $29 billion, funds incremental research rather than new ideas. In fact, only .5% of its budget is specifically committed to new ideas. The culture of biomedical research has evolved into one where researchers focus on singles rather than home runs; where “elegant science” that can be published in journals is the key to success, rather than development of ways to actually prevent, diagnose or cure disease. Additionally, the NIH strongly favors senior scientists. The average age for scientists receiving their first independent grant from the NIH is now a startling 42 for PhDs and 43 for MDs or MD/PhDs. That flies in the face of what we’ve learned about youth and innovation from the information technology revolution.

To try to address this problem, each year Damon Runyon is giving out the Damon Runyon Rachleff Innovation Awards, each $450,000 over three years, to young scientists pursuing high risk, potentially breakthrough research. This year's winners are doing research on early detection of ovarian and lung cancer, bone marrow transplant safety, and discovery of new genetic markers for cancer.

Now, here's the point that's relevant to this post. If any of these folks make real breakthroughs, there will be a big payoff. Much as is the case with traditional venture capital, investing in breakthrough research may lead nowhere, but the successes can pay for an awful lot of failures.

Where We Need Breakthroughs

I'll be writing followup posts on each of these areas, but I thought I'd outline just a few of the high-potential areas where tackling big problems (problems perhaps now mainly tackled by governments and non-profits) will lead to enormous payoffs:

• Health care. Most developed countries have an aging population. If health care costs aren't to go through the roof, we need real breakthroughs in reducing the costs of health care - health care delivery, diagnostic procedures, and overhead. There may be some systemic reforms that could reduce costs, but how about breakthroughs in actual technology? (I hope to write soon about a fascinating meeting I had with one entrepreneur who is working on a new diagnostic approach that could replace a $25,000 procedure with one costing 20% as much.) Meanwhile, developing countries will soon be consuming much more health care. If it's as badly managed and expensive as ours, ouch! And in third-world countries, unmet health needs are a huge drag on the potential of those countries' peoples to participate in the world economy.

• Energy. New forms of renewable energy, energy-efficient materials, smart devices that use energy more efficiently (think hyper-miling for your house, office, and factory, not to mention a smart grid, are all going to be fertile ground for new fortunes to be made by people doing work that matters.

• Reinventing Regulation and Risk Rating. With the intellectual bankruptcy of ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poors, there's a crying need for new tools for financial transparency. What can we learn from reputation systems on the net, from anti-spam efforts, and other kinds of automated detection of malfeasance and breakdown?

• Education. Our educational system needs to be reinvented. Why are we still using 19th century methods in the 21st century? When will we take the best practices of self-starters and apply them to general education? When will we take the opportunity of networking to build educational communities of interest and peer learning? How can we take better advantage of the net's ability to deliver information at lower cost and to customize learning paths?

There are many more examples. I hope to write in detail about each of these areas, with pointers to startups doing breakthrough work. I'd love your input and ideas. If you have a startup that is working on stuff that matters, or know of one, use the comments to put it on my radar. Thanks.

Work On Stuff That Matters: Video Interview with Tim O'Reilly

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 9

Over the past few months I have been interviewing various people that are "on our Radar" so to speak. It recently occurred to me that we had never done a video with Tim. So last week Kirk Walter (bless him!) grabbed his camera and Tim and I took a walk behind the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. We had a wide-ranging discussion (from Government to Cloud Computing) but started off with the theme that ran through many of Tim's talks last year; "Work on Stuff that Matters" These videos are a companion piece to Tim's recent blog post, of the same name.

We will be releasing the other segments over the next few weeks. They will also live on at www.thefutureatwork.com (where the video series has a home).

Part One:

Part Two:

Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 78

I spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be. I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone. I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself.

First off, though, I want to make clear that "work on stuff that matters" does not mean focusing on non-profit work, "causes, or any other form of "do-goodism." Non-profit projects often do matter a great deal, and people with tech skills can make important contributions, but it's essential to get beyond that narrow box. I'm a strong believer in the social value of business done right. We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.

There are a number of half-unconscious litmus tests I use in my own life. I'm going to try to tease them out here, and hope that you can help me think this through in the comments.

1. Work on something that matters to you more than money.

   I addressed this topic in my commencement address at SIMS a few years ago, and I'll think I'll just quote myself here.

   Some of you may end up working at highflying companies. Some of you may succeed, and some of you may fail. I want to remind you that financial success is not the only goal or the only measure of success. It's easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car -- you need to pay attention or you'll end up on the side of the road -- but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations!

   Whatever you do, think about what you really value. If you're an entrepreneur, the time you spend thinking about your values will help you build a better company. If you're going to work for someone else, the time you spend understanding your values will help you find the right kind of company or institution to work for, and when you find it, to do a better job.

   Don't be afraid to think big. Business author Jim Collins says that great companies have "big hairy audacious goals." Google's motto, "access to all the world's information" is an example of such a goal. I like to think that my own company's mission, "changing the world by sharing the knowledge of innovators," is also such a goal.

   Don't be afraid to fail. There's a wonderful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that talks about the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, being defeated, but coming away stronger from the fight. It ends with an exhortation that goes something like this: "What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things."

   One test of a bubble is how many entrepreneurs are focused on their upcoming payday rather than on the big things they hope to accomplish. Me-too products are almost always payday-focused; the entrepreneurs who first made the market often had much less expectation of easy success, and were instead wrestling, like Jacob with the angel, with a hard problem that they thought they could solve, or at the very least make a dent on.

   It's also clear that if you're thinking more about the competition than you are about customers and the value you're going to create for them, you're on the wrong path. As Kathy Sierra once put it, "In many cases, the more you try to compete, the less competitive you actually are."

   The most successful companies treat success as a byproduct of achieving their real goal, which is always something bigger and more important than they are.

2. Create more value than you capture.

   It's pretty easy to see that Bernie Madoff wasn't following this rule; nor were the titans of Wall Street who ended up giving out billions of dollars in bonuses to themselves while wrecking our economy. It's harder to judge the average small business, but it's pretty clear that most businesses do in fact create value for their community and their customers as well as themselves, and that the most successful businesses do so in part by creating a self-reinforcing value loop with their customers.

   For example, a bank that loans money to a small business sees that business grow, perhaps borrow more money, hire employees who make deposits and take out loans, and so on. The power of this cycle to lift people out of poverty has been demonstrated by microfinance institutions like the Grameen Bank. Grameen is clearly focused on creating more value than they capture; not so the like of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, or WaMu, or many of the other failed financial institutions involved in the current financial meltdown. They may have started there, but at some point, they clearly became more concerned with how much value they could capture for themselves.

   If you're succeeding at this goal, you may sometimes find that others have made more of your ideas than you have yourself. It's OK. I've had more than one billionaire (and an awful lot of startups who hope to follow in their footsteps) tell me how they got their start with a couple of O'Reilly books. I've had entrepreneurs tell me that they got the idea for their company from something I've said or written. That's a good thing! I remember back in the early days of the Internet, when the buyer at Borders told me after one of my talks, "Well, you've just given your competitors their publishing program for the year." If my goal is really "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators," I'm thrilled when my competitors jump on the bandwagon and help me spread the word!

   Look around you: How many people do you employ in fulfilling jobs? How many customers use your products to make their own living? How many competitors have you enabled? How many people have you touched that gave you nothing back?

   There's a wonderful section in Les Miserables about the good that Jean Valjean does as a businessman (operating under the pseudonym of Father Madeleine). Through his industry and vision, he makes an entire region prosperous, so that "there was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it." And the key point:

   Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself.

Focusing on big goals rather than on making money, and on creating more value than you capture are closely related principles. The first one is a test that applies to those starting something new; the second is the harder test that you must pass in order to create something enduring.

Take Microsoft. They started out with a big goal, "a computer on every desk and in every home," and for many years unquestionably created more value than they captured. They helped grow the PC industry as a whole; they built a platform that helped many small software vendors to flourish. But over time, they began to capture more value than they created: as the cost of PCs plummeted, hardware vendors had to survive on the slimmest of margins while Microsoft collected monopoly rents; bit by bit, Microsoft consumed its own developer ecosystem by building the features of successful startups into their own products, and using their operating system dominance to crush the early movers. As I've written elsewhere, I believe that Microsoft must re-commit itself to big goals beyond its own profitability, and to creating more value than it captures if it is to succeed. (Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece about the strategic relevance of this very idea just last week, Tough Love for Microsoft Search.)

Or take Google. Again, a huge goal: "Organize all the world's information." And like Microsoft in its early years, they are enabling others while making a pile of money for themselves. Any business with a web presence need only take a look at its referrer logs if it questions that assertion. How much of your traffic comes from Google? But again, as I've written previously, this test still looms in Google's future. Will they continue to create more value than they capture, or will they seek to capture more of the value for themselves?

It's a matter of balance. Every business needs to pay attention to its bottom line; every individual needs to put a roof over his or her head and provide food for loved ones. But take a look inside: how much are you thinking about yourself and what you might gain, versus what you might create?

It's particularly tough to stay focused on big issues in the face of an economic downturn, because getting paid looms large. I look back at some of the decisions I made after the crash in 2001, when I became far more focused on the survival of my business than on the value we were going to create in the marketplace. We did some me-too publishing that I really regret; the things that ultimately made a bigger difference to our bottom line were commitments to the future: our Web 2.0 events were driven by the goal of reigniting enthusiasm in the computer industry as well as helping people to understand the new rules of the emerging internet platform; Safari Books Online was driven by the desire to create a new revenue model not just for ourselves but for all publishers; Make: was a celebration of the next generation of hackers; Foo Camp started as a way to give something back to all the people who'd contributed to our success.

But these two tests are not enough, because it's become clear that we need a long term ecological perspective as well. So I'd add a third principle:

3. Take the long view.

Brian Eno tells a great story about the experience that led him to conceive of the ideas that led to The Long Now Foundation:

It was 1978. I was new to New York. A rich acquaintance had invited me to a housewarming party, and, as my cabdriver wound his way down increasingly potholed and dingy streets, I began wondering whether he’d got the address right. Finally he stopped at the doorway of a gloomy, unwelcoming industrial building. Two winos were crumpled on the steps, oblivious. There was no other sign of life in the whole street.

"I think you may have made a mistake", I ventured.

But he hadn’t. My friend’s voice called "Top Floor!" when I rang the bell, and I thought - knowing her sense of humour - "Oh - this is going to be some kind of joke!" I was all ready to laugh. The elevator creaked and clanked slowly upwards, and I stepped out - into a multi-million dollar palace. The contrast with the rest of the building and the street outside couldn’t have been starker.

I just didn’t understand. Why would anyone spend so much money building a place like that in a neighbourhood like this? Later I got into conversation with the hostess. "Do you like it here?" I asked. "It’s the best place I’ve ever lived", she replied. "But I mean, you know, is it an interesting neighbourhood?" "Oh - the neighbourhood? Well…that’s outside!" she laughed.

In the talk many years ago where I first heard him tell this story, Brian went on to describe the friend's apartment, the space she controlled, as "the small here," and the space outside, full of winos and derelicts, as "the big here." He went on from there, along with others, to come up with the analogous concept of the Long Now.

It's very easy to make local optimizations, but they eventually catch up with you. Our economy has many elements of a ponzi scheme. We borrow from other countries to finance our consumption, we borrow from our children by saddling them with debt and using up non-renewable resources.

It's hard to see beyond the "small here" and the "short now," especially if you live in a favored place and time. That's why so many of the really important things do end up on the plates of non-profits.

That's why a time like this, when the bubble is bursting, is a great time to see how important it is to think about the big picture, and what matters not just to us, but to building a sustainable economy in a sustainable world.

Waking Up from the 'Nightmare on Tech Street'

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 32

Reading Om Malik's Nightmare on Tech Street piece, I wonder if we're actually just waking up from the nightmare. Yes, the abrupt collapse of demand for consumer electronics and their ilk will hurt tech companies--I'm bracing my own for the slowdown--but the icy bath that brings down a killing fever trades pain for gain.

In a recent conversation with my daughter Arwen and son-in-law Saul Griffith, Matt Webb remarked that he'd like 2008 to be remembered as the year of "peak consumption." Saul pointed out, though, that the term "peak waste" is perhaps more accurate. In an analogy to peak oil, he suggested that maybe we've reached the pinnacle of waste in our consumer culture. I do wonder if we will look back at the past few decades as a kind of sick aberration rather than a golden age, with good times we want to get back to. Like Saul, I'm hopeful that we can get rid of the waste, and get back to creating things of lasting value.

I've so often been struck by the incongruity of vast Chinese factories producing millions of truly useless goods, from tourist tchotchkes to marketing gimmickry. (I've often wondered: "What do they think of us, so rich that we can afford to spend money on so much that is useless!" And now we find that perhaps our wealth too was rooted in illusion.) And even when it comes to consumer electronics, we've built a throwaway culture rooted in waste. As Saul likes to say, you can't imagine handing down "your grandfather's iPod" the way you could your grandmother's watch, or tools, or furniture, or books. It doesn't have to be that way. Yes, technology improves and old devices get left behind, but there are so many innovations that could reduce waste, improve usability and create lasting value, things like standardized power adapters, open source hardware that is re-usable, modifiable, and repairable, as well as technology that is simple and robust enough to pass the test of time.

We've had a shock, yes, with more to come. But let's hope it wakes us up. Let's not lament it. Let's embrace it, and use it to change our priorities. As I've said before, the best response to the downturn is to work on stuff that matters!